Hello guys, new DM here! Me and my party got the starter set, after playing our first session it actually had a great development I'd love to use in the future. Basically they captured a goblin, tortured it A LOT, cut off his tongue and sent him into the hideout, to try and lure out some guards. And that was the last they heard of the goblin. They cleared the hideout and found no trace of the tongueless goblin. Also they didn't kill the Pet-wolf of Klarg, the Boss of that dungeon, it managed to escape.
In the future I want them to hear rumors about a Silver-Tongued Goblin riding a wolf causing trouble in the outskirts of Phandalin. Maybe even use his lore as a transition from the starter set campaign to the next.
Anyway I want to give the goblin a magic Item, a silver tongue, which allows him to speak every language. I'm not too familiar with existing magic items nor with the world of DnD and how big of a role certain languages could play. Do you think it would be too overpowered of an item if my party gets ahold of it?
The twist with this item is that you can only use it if you place it in your mouth, the only way to place it in your mouth is you have to cut your own tongue (1d4 damage), which means if you lose the magic item you won't be able to talk. So spellcasting requiring Verbal wouldn't be possible either. They are level 2 at the moment and should be level 5 when they finish this campaign.
On another note, I'd like to ask how do you recommend rewarding your players with such a Magic Item?
Do you give it to them and explain them what it does or do you have them roll Arcana?
I was thinking about giving them the item, let them figure out on their own that they have to roll Arcana, tell them they sense magic comming from the Item but they are not sure what it does (unless rolling a Nat20) and have them ask NPCs in a town to learn everything about the item. Or is that too much to ask for?
For reference on power, "Comprehend Languages" is a 1st-level spell that can be cast as a ritual. So any party with a Wizard could (with a 10-minute prep time) get to the point where they understand any language, if the wizard learns that spell. So from that POV, understanding all languages is pretty cheap. It wouldn't let you speak all languages, though.
On the other hand, "Linguist" is a feat that gives you three languages - so three languages seems to be worth half of an ability score increase. So that's a pretty big cost.
First-level Great Old One warlocks get Awakened Mind: the ability to telepathically speak to any creature they can see within 30 feet, even if they don't share a language. So Level 1 warlocks can effectively speak any language, as long as they're only talking to one person.
So overall, a magic item that lets someone speak (and presumably understand?) all languages isn't horribly overpowering - it's not too different from what a low-level warlock or wizard can kind of do with some effort. In addition, from a role-play perspective, at many tables languages don't matter too much anyway - many parties never end up in an area where they can't speak languages, and it can get handwaved away for gameplay reasons if people aren't careful.
A party in LMOP probably won't run into a city or town where they don't speak any languages. However, if they get this item, now they'll be able to eavesdrop on (and talk to) the goblins and bugbears they run into more easily. Mainly it takes a tool away from you, the DM - you're not going to throw the party in a situation where they can't talk to anyone. Overall, I think it's fine as an item - and I love how thematic it is with the story you're telling. With the restrictions - that to use this item you have to cut out your tongue, and can't cast many spells - it's definitely not too powerful.
(Note that even if they use this item and cut out their tongue, I think the players could make a decent case that a healing spell could heal their cut-out tongue, allowing them to switch between using the silver tongue or not. I'd probably allow it - otherwise I think the players would be too cautious about using it - but RAW I'm not sure if it would work with something like "Cure wounds" or whether you'd have to use "regenerate" which explicitly calls out regrowing limbs.)
A magic item’s description explains how the item works. Handling a magic item is enough to give a character a sense that something is extraordinary about the item. The identify spell is the fastest way to reveal an item’s properties. Alternatively, a character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item’s properties, as well as how to use them. Potions are an exception; a little taste is enough to tell the taster what the potion does.
So technically, just them getting the item is enough to know it's magical, and then they have to either identify the item with a spell or take a short rest. Not that much work.
My guess is that the rules are that way to allow magic item use in general. Without an easy way to identify magic items, lots of items would just pass through the party unidentified and unused. You can of course rule differently for this particular magic item if you're so inclined, but you should have a good answer when the players try one of the two ways from the rules.
I do have one more comment about this:
I was thinking about giving them the item, let them figure out on their own that they have to roll Arcana,
The players should never on their own be "figuring out what to roll". The players are supposed to describe to the DM what the characters DO, and then the DM tells them what roll, if any, is necessary. You should always keep encouraging the players to describe what action the characters are taking, NOT what skill/stat they're using.
Glad to hear that the basic idea wouldnt be too powerful. Thank you for the reference points, I might even implement the item sooner than I thought. As far as I have experienced my party, they are not really the stealthy eavesdroppy kind of party so maybe giving them an extra tool to play with might give them some aide to be stealthy if needed. Even though I believe they will abuse it to taunt and intimidate their enemies in their own language haha.
About curing the cut tongue, would you allow a healing potion to heal the wounds? The party doesn't have a cleric (he cancelled last second and i'm not sure if he is fond of joining next sessions).
About the identification rule thanks for pointing it out, didn't quite catch that one while skimming through the rules. That one clears out the second question completly.
Having researched quite a bit about DnD, before jumping into it as a DM it still blows my mind, how well written the rules and how in-depth the whole game is! I feel like I still havent even scratched the tip of the iceberg.
About your last comment, thats a bad habbit me and the players have that we need to work on. For instance, the players asking me wether they can roll insight on a NPC. I'll try to enforce the rule of the players having to tell me what they want to do rather than what to roll.
Thanks for the elaborate explanations and pointers!
About curing the cut tongue, would you allow a healing potion to heal the wounds? The party doesn't have a cleric (he cancelled last second and i'm not sure if he is fond of joining next sessions).
Not sure. Seems like not much of a drawback if any sort of healing can regrow the tongue. So I'd guess not, but I can't exactly articulate right now why I would say that, so don't take that too seriously.
If there's no cleric then that makes it easier to adjudicate actually - that makes a cut-off tongue something that the party could fix by, say, finding a cleric at a temple in some sufficiently large city, but not something they can do on their own. Or maybe a quest hook, "find the hermit in the forest that can cure this stuff" or whatever. Some amount of difficulty that's higher than "eh, just rest and it's fine" but lower than "shoot, we're screwed until level 13."
I'd say any answer here would work fine, from "yep, just take a healing potion to get your tongue back" to "Nope, gotta head to Neverwinter and do a sidequest for the cleric there to get him to heal your tongue back." I'd probably listen to how my table's feeling about it and go from there.
About your last comment, thats a bad habbit me and the players have that we need to work on. For instance, the players asking me wether they can roll insight on a NPC. I'll try to enforce the rule of the players having to tell me what they want to do rather than what to roll.
Yep, that was a bad habit from my first D&D game too. It's probably really common. Players think of their D&D skills as their "list of options", and then pick from their list, and roll.
D&D is best when those are resolution systems, not lists of options. The characters can try to do literally anything that makes sense to do. This gives characters MORE freedom to do whatever they want (even if it doesn't fit a particular skill neatly) and gives the DM more freedom to adjudicate what happens. Instead of "can I roll insight on the NPC?" it should be "can I tell whether the NPC is lying?" (or whatever it is they wanted to roll insight for).
If I'm comparing existing spells, giving the item the ability to speak and understand any language would be Tongues rather than Comprehend Languages.
When you talk about an actually removed body part, you may have to resort to Regenerate in order to restore it, which is pretty powerful magic.
I suggest having it require attunement, and give it the option to cast Tongues once a day as an action. That should still qualify as an uncommon or maybe rare item.
You could also consider having it grant the user advantage on a social interaction roll rather than being able to speak any languages. Maybe with 3 charges?
Hello guys, new DM here! Me and my party got the starter set, after playing our first session it actually had a great development I'd love to use in the future.
Basically they captured a goblin, tortured it A LOT, cut off his tongue and sent him into the hideout, to try and lure out some guards. And that was the last they heard of the goblin. They cleared the hideout and found no trace of the tongueless goblin. Also they didn't kill the Pet-wolf of Klarg, the Boss of that dungeon, it managed to escape.
In the future I want them to hear rumors about a Silver-Tongued Goblin riding a wolf causing trouble in the outskirts of Phandalin. Maybe even use his lore as a transition from the starter set campaign to the next.
Anyway I want to give the goblin a magic Item, a silver tongue, which allows him to speak every language. I'm not too familiar with existing magic items nor with the world of DnD and how big of a role certain languages could play. Do you think it would be too overpowered of an item if my party gets ahold of it?
The twist with this item is that you can only use it if you place it in your mouth, the only way to place it in your mouth is you have to cut your own tongue (1d4 damage), which means if you lose the magic item you won't be able to talk. So spellcasting requiring Verbal wouldn't be possible either. They are level 2 at the moment and should be level 5 when they finish this campaign.
On another note, I'd like to ask how do you recommend rewarding your players with such a Magic Item?
Do you give it to them and explain them what it does or do you have them roll Arcana?
I was thinking about giving them the item, let them figure out on their own that they have to roll Arcana, tell them they sense magic comming from the Item but they are not sure what it does (unless rolling a Nat20) and have them ask NPCs in a town to learn everything about the item. Or is that too much to ask for?
For reference on power, "Comprehend Languages" is a 1st-level spell that can be cast as a ritual. So any party with a Wizard could (with a 10-minute prep time) get to the point where they understand any language, if the wizard learns that spell. So from that POV, understanding all languages is pretty cheap. It wouldn't let you speak all languages, though.
On the other hand, "Linguist" is a feat that gives you three languages - so three languages seems to be worth half of an ability score increase. So that's a pretty big cost.
First-level Great Old One warlocks get Awakened Mind: the ability to telepathically speak to any creature they can see within 30 feet, even if they don't share a language. So Level 1 warlocks can effectively speak any language, as long as they're only talking to one person.
So overall, a magic item that lets someone speak (and presumably understand?) all languages isn't horribly overpowering - it's not too different from what a low-level warlock or wizard can kind of do with some effort. In addition, from a role-play perspective, at many tables languages don't matter too much anyway - many parties never end up in an area where they can't speak languages, and it can get handwaved away for gameplay reasons if people aren't careful.
A party in LMOP probably won't run into a city or town where they don't speak any languages. However, if they get this item, now they'll be able to eavesdrop on (and talk to) the goblins and bugbears they run into more easily. Mainly it takes a tool away from you, the DM - you're not going to throw the party in a situation where they can't talk to anyone. Overall, I think it's fine as an item - and I love how thematic it is with the story you're telling. With the restrictions - that to use this item you have to cut out your tongue, and can't cast many spells - it's definitely not too powerful.
(Note that even if they use this item and cut out their tongue, I think the players could make a decent case that a healing spell could heal their cut-out tongue, allowing them to switch between using the silver tongue or not. I'd probably allow it - otherwise I think the players would be too cautious about using it - but RAW I'm not sure if it would work with something like "Cure wounds" or whether you'd have to use "regenerate" which explicitly calls out regrowing limbs.)
About identifying magic items: that's described at https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/magic-items#UsingaMagicItem . RAW it's pretty easy, actually.
So technically, just them getting the item is enough to know it's magical, and then they have to either identify the item with a spell or take a short rest. Not that much work.
My guess is that the rules are that way to allow magic item use in general. Without an easy way to identify magic items, lots of items would just pass through the party unidentified and unused. You can of course rule differently for this particular magic item if you're so inclined, but you should have a good answer when the players try one of the two ways from the rules.
I do have one more comment about this:
The players should never on their own be "figuring out what to roll". The players are supposed to describe to the DM what the characters DO, and then the DM tells them what roll, if any, is necessary. You should always keep encouraging the players to describe what action the characters are taking, NOT what skill/stat they're using.
Glad to hear that the basic idea wouldnt be too powerful. Thank you for the reference points, I might even implement the item sooner than I thought. As far as I have experienced my party, they are not really the stealthy eavesdroppy kind of party so maybe giving them an extra tool to play with might give them some aide to be stealthy if needed. Even though I believe they will abuse it to taunt and intimidate their enemies in their own language haha.
About curing the cut tongue, would you allow a healing potion to heal the wounds? The party doesn't have a cleric (he cancelled last second and i'm not sure if he is fond of joining next sessions).
About the identification rule thanks for pointing it out, didn't quite catch that one while skimming through the rules. That one clears out the second question completly.
Having researched quite a bit about DnD, before jumping into it as a DM it still blows my mind, how well written the rules and how in-depth the whole game is! I feel like I still havent even scratched the tip of the iceberg.
About your last comment, thats a bad habbit me and the players have that we need to work on. For instance, the players asking me wether they can roll insight on a NPC. I'll try to enforce the rule of the players having to tell me what they want to do rather than what to roll.
Thanks for the elaborate explanations and pointers!
Not sure. Seems like not much of a drawback if any sort of healing can regrow the tongue. So I'd guess not, but I can't exactly articulate right now why I would say that, so don't take that too seriously.
If there's no cleric then that makes it easier to adjudicate actually - that makes a cut-off tongue something that the party could fix by, say, finding a cleric at a temple in some sufficiently large city, but not something they can do on their own. Or maybe a quest hook, "find the hermit in the forest that can cure this stuff" or whatever. Some amount of difficulty that's higher than "eh, just rest and it's fine" but lower than "shoot, we're screwed until level 13."
I'd say any answer here would work fine, from "yep, just take a healing potion to get your tongue back" to "Nope, gotta head to Neverwinter and do a sidequest for the cleric there to get him to heal your tongue back." I'd probably listen to how my table's feeling about it and go from there.
Sounds awesome.
Yep, that was a bad habit from my first D&D game too. It's probably really common. Players think of their D&D skills as their "list of options", and then pick from their list, and roll.
D&D is best when those are resolution systems, not lists of options. The characters can try to do literally anything that makes sense to do. This gives characters MORE freedom to do whatever they want (even if it doesn't fit a particular skill neatly) and gives the DM more freedom to adjudicate what happens. Instead of "can I roll insight on the NPC?" it should be "can I tell whether the NPC is lying?" (or whatever it is they wanted to roll insight for).
If I'm comparing existing spells, giving the item the ability to speak and understand any language would be Tongues rather than Comprehend Languages.
When you talk about an actually removed body part, you may have to resort to Regenerate in order to restore it, which is pretty powerful magic.
I suggest having it require attunement, and give it the option to cast Tongues once a day as an action. That should still qualify as an uncommon or maybe rare item.
You could also consider having it grant the user advantage on a social interaction roll rather than being able to speak any languages. Maybe with 3 charges?
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules